The Sickness
by Angelinhel
Summary: A response to TAG's IC: Everyone likes to read about the end of the world. A mechanism for bringing it about is actually built into the canon of Daria Morgendorffer's life, while she was still in 9th grade in Highland High School, Highland TX.


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**CLASSIFIED**

**PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF EMERGENCY BUREAU OF ALCOHOL TOBACCO & FIREARMS MEETING  
HOOVER DAM CONFERENCE ROOM – 05/13/97  
RE: THEFT OF X-5 BIOWEAPON UNIT FROM ARMY RESEARCH FACILITY, HADLEY NV**

**BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION**

FLEMMING: Bork, we're dealing with real pros here. My opinion, terrorists. What's the scoop on that stolen unit?

BORK: Well, sir it's not good. Roll the tape. The X-5 unit is a new top-secret biological weapon, a manmade virus, the deadliest known to man. It could wipe out five states in five days. It can be activated by simply entering the right code. Here's what happened when it was tested on a group of Army recruits.

FLEMMING: Jesus Jumped-Up Christ! If this were to fall into the wrong hands—

BORK: It gets worse. The unit wasn't finished. It has a flaw: the casing. If hit hard enough, it could break open, releasing the virus.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD NOISES

FLEMMING: Okay, people, as of right now these are the most dangerous men in America. I want these faces in front of every Fed and two-bit sheriff within a thousand miles. The orders are dead or alive. Let's just pray that nothing hits that unit.

**END TRANSCRIPTION**  
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They called it _The Sickness_. Of course it had an official name, full of scientific and sterile-sounding numbers and letters, but anyone who had seen it or what it was capable of, called it simply, _The Sickness_. Personally, she thought it was a vague attempt to rob it of its horror, diffuse the ravages of the virus by calling it something so simple and bland, like it was no more than the sniffles. A mirthless laugh escaped, to be heard by nothing.

In the small cave above the valley, she waited, toying with a a gun than only had three bullets left. The sun said it was midday, as did her watch that miraculously still kept time. Time that passed regardless of the world dying around it. It was an oddly comforting, yet incredibly depressing though. She had a lot of those.

Two years ago the world ended. No one knew it at the time, and even now some refused to believe it. The sun still rose and set, the tides flowed, the wind blew. Perhaps it always would. But she was sure that soon, no one would be there to see it.

It started in a backwater town in the United States, as all good apocalypses did. Two teenage boys, a fluke involving cargo so dangerous and terrifying the old 'hide-in-plain-sight' ruse seemed best, and a chance occurrence that could only be the product of amazing coincidence or the work of a very vengeful god.

A virus. Something so tiny and yet so powerful. Government, of course, designed to render an army incapacitated within days. Whichever scientist/s had designed it had obviously been fans of sci-fi horror as the result of infection was horrific. Ebola was a cold compared to The Sickness. It was a violent, gory death that would strike fear into the most seasoned of war vets. No atomic bomb frightened people like this tiny thing did. Like all optimistic weapons designers, those who created it undoubtedly thought that once it was known it existed, war would cease for fear of its unleashing. Maybe it would have, the world would never know.

After the initial release, the first case happened swiftly. The military shut down the town where it happened before the first symptoms even showed up in the hopes of containment but even the creators had no idea what they had made. The town was in lockdown, no one went in or out and hourly checks by an unnamed military force on every man woman and child were routine until they discovered the eighteen year old waitress with the first signs. May Janeston. After the virus got loose, they called that day May Day. The beginning of the end.

She was isolated, the diner was burned and everyone who had been in it, near it, or even looked at it was put through a humiliating, and ultimately useless, decontamination. It took her four days to die.

It took the rest of the town ten.

The military napalmed everything within a twenty mile radius and started tossing out cover up stories. The next victim showed up a hundred miles away.

Within the month, whatever the government had thought to say to calm or hide what was happening flew out the window faster than the virus flew over the land, killing everything in its path. For once, they told people the truth. What it was, what it was designed to do and what they hoped would stop it.

From May Day, it was twenty-two days until The Sickness hit Lawndale. She didn't know how many people or towns had died between the tiny Texas town and her suburb, but she remembered the news that night. Someone had shown up at the ER with the first signs. They'd been isolated, but everyone had seen the national news. Some people fled, some people panicked, a lot of people started making their final arrangements and some ended it themselves before The Sickness got to them.

Sitting with her friend, they'd exchanged glances filled with horror and despair. The news kept saying scientists were fast on track for a cure, but they knew better. One only had to look at the backgrounds of the towns that no longer existed to see the virus was beyond anything they were capable of dealing with. Once the virus showed up, there was no hope.

In humans, it began as a small open sore, not unlike poison ivy that had been scratched at. Red, weeping, itchy. Within hours, the sore spread, covering the body in vile-smelling goo as the skin sloughed away. Internally, organs overheated and broke down. Pockets of gas ruptured and burst through vessels and tissue. The body's own enzymes escaped and raged though everything. Eventually, the body dissolved itself in a bloody, pulpy mess. If they were lucky, it was over within a day, but some people seemed to resist and hung on for two or three, one even an entire ghastly week. But once the first sore appeared, it was over.

What was even worse was The Sickness was not human specific. Even after the devastation was well under way, the government and news avoided the real scope of the virus. It wasn't specific to _anything_. It killed indiscriminately. Humans, animals, even plants. Nothing living was immune. Animals, warm or cold blooded, land or sea, traveled the same path as humans: sores to a puddle of dissolved flesh. Other than human air travel, most scientists believed after the virus hit the water, the planet was doomed. What scared people the most was it killed plants as well, shriveling and rotting them to the ground. Not unlike the animal route, it began as spots on the stems and leaves, ending in what looked like accelerated rot. Nothing was safe. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The world was dying in the most grotesque way possible.

She had watched her best friend die. She'd been strong. Four days. The rest of her family had died in less than one. Refusing to leave her side, she'd watched as her friend slowly disappeared, the thin cotton sheet hiding the putrid goo she was becoming. On the last day, the stench of death and decay was overpowering. Leaving wasn't going to save either of them, so she stayed. She'd held her friend's ravaged hand as she took her last wet, shuddering breath, unable to even cry for the horror of it.

There were few people left in the town after that. News was scarce, some stations in the bigger cities still ran programs, but most of the tv stations ran text news loops instead of live shows. They rarely changed. Oddly, she and another survived. Together, they drove to a city, wondering if others had as well, wanting to be with at least a few other people before The Sickness took them if not. For a year, they traveled the East coast, seeing less and less life as they did so. They changed cars when they ran out of gas, raided stores when they ran out of food, watched news loops when they ran out of words. Occasionally, they found other survivors, but inevitably, the sore appeared and they were left with only one another again.

In the spring of the second year, they moved to the cave. Why they suddenly decided to give up the relative comforts of houses and furniture, they weren't sure. Maybe it seemed less depressing than living in an empty town, as if they expected other people to show up at any moment. They were half a day's walk from a moderately sized city. They went in about once a week for supplies, to watch the stagnant news loop, and to watch the occasional DVD in the house on the edge of town that had a generator. _I Am Legend_ was her favorite, but he preferred Bruce Willis action movies. Often, he took supplies back instead of watching with her. She saw his point, but as she pointed out to him one day, "At least we don't have zombies, right?"

In the darkest part of night, she admitted to herself even zombies would be a welcome distraction from the endless nothing all around them.

She heard footsteps on the dirt path to the cave and looked up.

He seemed excited somehow and in a moment, she knew why. he held out a handful of bright, red berries.

"Look Janey! The berries are coming back!" Trent smiled at his sister. Something she hadn't seen in almost a year. "There's green down there, by the river."

Hope was something else she hadn't seen in almost a year. She smiled back. "Green, huh?"

"Maybe it's over," Trent said as he sat on the small ledge in the sun, popping a berry in his mouth. They hadn't had anything fresh in a very long time. "Something survived out there, like us. Maybe other places too."

"Well, it would be kind of sick if you and I were the last humans on Earth," Jane replied with a smirk.

Trent laughed and gazed out over the barren landscape, scratching his left shoulder as he ate another berry.

Behind him, Jane's smile disappeared. She'd seen the berry bush the previous day and had had the same thought. Until she'd pulled a berry-laden branch closer and seen a spot on one of the leaves.

A spot that matched the one on Trent's left shoulder blade.

She picked up the gun.


End file.
